Pollution, Local Activism, and the Politics of Development in the Canadian North

This article addresses the often ignored history of Indigenous responses to environmental pollution. Focusing on resistance to arsenic pollution from Giant Mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories, Sandlos and Keeling explore how Indigenous communities mobilized knowledge around environmental pollutio...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sandlos, John, Keeling, Arn
Other Authors: Clapperton, Jonathan, Piper, Liza
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Rachel Carson Center 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://research.library.mun.ca/12364/
https://research.library.mun.ca/12364/1/2015_i4_final-04_sandlos_and_keeling.pdf
http://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/2015_i4_final-04_sandlos_and_keeling.pdf
Description
Summary:This article addresses the often ignored history of Indigenous responses to environmental pollution. Focusing on resistance to arsenic pollution from Giant Mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories, Sandlos and Keeling explore how Indigenous communities mobilized knowledge around environmental pollution, conducting their own studies when government research minimized or ignored their concerns about the health impacts of pollution, participating in public hearings, and continuing to push for research into the long-term health effects even after the mine closed. The authors show how this resistance to environmental racism is connected to other Indigenous struggles over industrial development and to issues such as land claims, sovereignty, and colonial dispossession.